How about a mycncuk cnc router project?

[Jonathan]

I agree with what John S has said - this wont get anywhere due to conflicting requirements. One could split the project into designing a set of machines, each aimed at different requirements, but even then people will want something different, or wont be able to source the materials, or tools... etc

The reason I'm most interested in making machines that can cut aluminium is that any machine which is strong enough to cut wood and plastic with respectable speed and accuracy is by default also strong enough to cut aluminium, not efficiently (the milling machine will always win there), but enough to be useful. Unless you make the thing from MDF and do what we might call the classic mistakes, it's hard to make a small machine which isn't capable of cutting aluminium reasonably efficiently.